Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. Coolest book title ever. Don't say we didn't warn you.

I don't generally comment on work submitted to the fanfic or fan art departments, but...

Cool.

Two comments, I guess. First, I always suspected Peach had the potential to be much more interesting than she was traditionally shown as, and second, now I can't help but wonder: did Nintendo make a mistake in working with Square for the Mario RPG? Perhaps a collaboration with Konami and Kojima could have come up with something like this, a "Mario Gear Solid", if you will. But I guess this is as close as we'll get, now. Bummer.

Onward.

I see where you're coming from, but like I said last time, I think things are slightly different with the next gen systems. Basically, I don't think developers can get to the edge of what these boxes are capable of in the lifetime of the consoles. Look, Soul Calibur is a stunningly gorgeous game, and frankly looks about as good as I need my games to look at the moment. And if I remember right, it uses about half of the Dreamcast's available power.

Of course, the PS2, Game Cube and X-Box are far more powerful than the DC, and I'm sure that developers won't let most of that extra power go to waste - they'll render individual strands of hair and pebbles on the ground just because they can. But even so, I really doubt they'll ever scratch more than 50 or 60 percent of what the PS2's capable of. What this means is that moving games from one system to another won't mean the truncation of interesting features because there's not enough room in the lowest common denominator system - every system will easily be able to handle whatever programmers can throw at it. Of course, programming on the DC won't be like programming on the PS2, but given proper design it shouldn't be difficult to make a generic core engine and a system specific wrapper to implement the game on a given platform. And if that's the case, the resources needed to make a port will be far less than you'd need to make an original game, meaning ports will be where the profit lies for a developer.

You remind me of an English teacher I had once, and since I liked the teacher in question, you should take that as a compliment. Your definitions are correct, I won't dispute them.

Playing devil's advocate for a moment, I think there are people out there to whom the trappings of a story really are that important - my colleague AK's one of them, in fact. For some reason, they really, really like castles, swords, knights and dragons, and they expect them in their RPGs. Personally, for me the setting and trappings have never been as important as the core of the story and how it's told - in fact, because of that I tend to prefer the "sci-fi" genre to the "fantasy" genre, since traditional fantasy often does seem to be about the swords and castles and not the people using both. But regardless, fantasy can apply just as well to people in spacesuits as it does to rogue pirate princesses, so just deal with it, people.

I have no problems with a well deserved "I told you so", but at this point I'm a little unsure how to respond. Should I applaud, yell out "You de man!", hang my head in castigation even though I never disputed your claim?

In fact, I think I'll give you a moment to enjoy your small victory, and leave it at that.

...

Ok, moment's over, back to work.

I had to look up what "ad hominem" meant, I admit. I suck. But now that I know what the phrase means, I can say this: I didn't intend to attack Ian Kelley's character. in fact, I didn't mean to attack him at all, or his review - it does a fine job of covering the facts and his take on those facts, near as I can tell, and I apologize if he took any offense. The sarcasm was actually directed at the writer of the letter, who seemed to imply that I might perhaps not have heard of the old school perspective and their arguments that the FFs are getting worse as time goes by. Heck, at the time I wasn't even arguing against the old school philosophy, just pointing out an alternative viewpoint.

So basically the lesson here is, don't point out the bloody obvious to me unless you're trying to tick me off. I know about how popular DQ is in Japan, I know about RPG Maker 2000, and if I mention a writer or musician or movie that's not an excuse for you to say "yes, but you really should read/hear/see this other thing of theirs", because chances are I already have. End of rant.

And in the interests of getting back to things you actually wrote in about, Nista, rather than attacking my own personal demons, I have not hugged my metal slime today. Damn thing keeps eating through my clothes whenever I try.

Fortunately for you, I just exhaled all my bile in one big chunk, so I won't beat you over the head with the fact that the "Wiretap guy" already answered most of your points before you made them.

I mean, yes, there are genres on the console that would kick ass if you could implement them on-line. Ever since Play Online was announced, I've been salivating over the idea of head to head FFT matches, and others have expanded on this idea by suggesting FFT melees consisting of dozens of players at once. But like Nich said, the ease of use that has made PC online gaming so prevalent just ain't there when it comes to consoles... yet. It may someday happen, but until it's demonstrated otherwise, it's not a bad idea to take the conservative viewpoint, and assume things will keep on more or less as is.

First, what you describe there is basically any given Zelda game's battle system, except for the exclamation icons, and I don't think Zelda's done all that badly. But that aside, there's considerably more to it than that, once you get into setting up affinities, targeting specific body parts, and using your defensive abilities.

Second, you start getting them once you get past the first boss - just remember to set the attacks you want to use to specific controller buttons.

Third, I really don't want to know.

Fourth, I assume once you defeat Lavos, Schala's spirit, which knows everything, migrates to Kid, thereby letting her know who Serge is. But who does care? The extra endings are such a miniscule part of the game they're hardly worth obsessing over. And hell yeah, the music rocks!

Ok, I've answered this before, I've answered this in the FAQ, but I still guess I have to answer it now: the review's not WRONG, as long as it doesn't contain factual errors, it merely HAS A DIFFERENT OPINION ON WHAT THOSE FACTS MEAN. Believe it or not, people can interpret the exact same information in completely different ways, and if other people have different opinions than you do, it doesn't mean they're thinking incorrectly, just differently.

That said, on the one hand I did ask for something like this with my rantings about nobody sending in any DQ opinions, but on the other hand, defending this would put me in the odd position of defending a review written on another site for a game I haven't even played. So I'll just pass on info from friends of mine who have played the game, point out differences in philosophy between myself and Mr. Anton, and leave it at that.

The 3D graphics are apparently... really bad. I'm not talking just passable, Wild Arms 1 battle models here, I'm talking crude, low polygon, visible seams, details painted on as texture maps rather than rendered as their own objects.

That said, I think you're way off base with your comments about FMV. I don't think a game has to have FMV to be good - Vagrant Story didn't, and that easily had some of the best cutscenes I've ever seen. But pre-rendered FMV is a great way for developers to get a hit of realism during key story points - in other words, making it look good when suspension of disbelief really counts. Square's hardly the only company to do so, either - I defy you to look me in the eye and tell me that the short CG interludes in Starcraft didn't make the game.

The problem is, aspiration to create something great doesn't necessarily translate into the ability to create something great. I imagine that everyone who's ever read this column has had their own idea for a game, or movie, or book... but maybe one in a thousand actually has the talent to make it reality. Companies know that, which is why you've really got to fight hard to get in the door, rather than them welcoming anyone who says "I think it would be cool if..."

As for the "central building", what are you smoking? It takes weeks, if not months on end of non-stop programming to make a game, and it's not something that you could do if you stopped home on your way from school each afternoon. And the punchline is that most game developers DO work for free, until the game is sold. When you write code for 12 hours a day and don't have any money to show for it at the end of the week, your dedication gets tested very quickly. I think there are people who are driven enough to make the games they want to see out there, and Microsoft's program might help a very small handful of them get off the ground... but if you want to be a developer someday, you better get ready for a long, hard winter.

Ok, I won't argue against your hypothesis, except to say that the DC sales figures have been very good since SegaNet debuted, and will likely remain so through the holidays.

My only question is, when do we get to WWII? And who are the Americans and Japanese gonna be?

Reading through the recent vault of the original managed to remind me of everything I liked about the first game, without reminding me of all the tedium of the actual battles and dungeons. I'm interested in the game, and wish we'd seen a lot more of the Megami Tensei series over here in the US, but I don't think it's gonna make a huge splash against everything that's coming out. That said, it clearly is a niche product, and I think Atlus is just looking to squeeze out what it can before the PSX dies for good. It's not an ideal business plan, but it's about as good as can be expected at the moment.

Closing Comments:

I dunno about you, but I could definitely use a break from this week. So have fun with AK, talk about the happy, interesting things about games and try to avoid tedious topics that get ground into dust for the weekend. Maybe we can do a bit of that next week as well.

Also, fair warning: there seems to be a fair amount of interest in Valkyrie Profile, so I may do a spoiler column on it next week. If you're interested in getting in on the action, try to finish your play through this weekend. See you Monday.

-Chris Jones, not touching another email for 48 hours.